Alain Badiou’s ‘Event’and ‘The Truth’


''Reality consists out of two ‘layers’; the dominant ideology/state of the situation/ count-for-one and the ‘excluded part’. The excluded part is always there, but it remains imprisoned and hidden beneath the layer of the dominant ideology. The thing is that the dominant ideology can never ensure to keep the excluded part remain silent. An Event is needed to get the excluded part to appear upon the ‘social scene’. Once the excluded part is there for everyone to witness; it drastically changes peoples their perception of reality.''

''Anything that isn’t part of the count-for-one (and this an excluded part), can be the site of a revolt/event (this due to it being unmanaged by the dominant ideology). The excluded part can never have an identity or attributes, it has to depend on the basis of pure humanity. Even though the excluded part doesn’t have an identity; it’s still being represented by the Event itself. This representation by the Event unfolds itself in the production of ‘Truths’, Subjects and New Social Systems.''

''An Event is traumatic for the mainstream and has to be hugely transformative for participants. The Event can’t be linked to a situation and it has no (legal) foundation; it’s something in itself (therefore they cannot be conceptualized and/or named). Events are outside the normal structures of social control; it will happen sooner or later (one accepts an Event or rejects it) and it allows something completely new to come into existence (Badiou also calls it; the rewriting of the ‘’social-contract’’). If an Event can be classified, has an (legal) foundation, justifies itself or can be linked to a situation, then it’s not a real Event.''

''An Event has no foundation; it simply depends on experience or belief; ‘The Truth’.''

''The Event can’t simply be the liberation of everyone who is a part of the excluded part; the dominant order always requires the exclusion of a particular group so in order to accomplish an Event; you have to reject this state of exclusion in the first place. All the participants of an Event have to contribute to the ‘shifting of the discourse’, if everyone, who was for the dominant ideology, is still for it after; then the Event didn’t make anything ‘appear’ and thus it wasn’t a ‘real’ Event.''